William Edward Hawthorne, editor and proprietor of the "Echo," at
Granville, his native city, was born June 7, 1859. His ancestral, lineal and
collateral branches have for various generations been distinctly American
and prior to that time was of English, Scotch and Irish lineage. Research
into family records brings to light the fact that the Mayflower brought to
America the progenitor of the Hawthorne family, of which William Edward
Hawthorne is a representative. In correspondence with Julian Hawthorne, son
of Nathaniel Hawthorne, it is found that this Concord man of letters is a
representative of another branch of the same family. There is also an Irish
strain in the ancestry and when Mr. Hawthorne met the famous Irishman,
Michael Davitt, who was then touring the United States, said to him in the
course of conversation that he traced his ancestry back to the McFaddens,
Davitt replied, "McFadden, McFadden, they'd throw no stones at ye in County
Cork. The McFaddens are a great clan."
William Hawthorne, father of William Edward Hawthorne, and the fourth in the
line of descent to bear that name, was a farmer by occupation and on
removing to the middle west entered land from the government four miles
southeast of Granville. He paid for this tract a dollar and a quarter per
acre and today it is worth two hundred dollars per acre. He married Susan
Findley, who died when their son, William E., was six years of age, after
which the little lad spent four years with his grandmother, Mrs. Margaret
(Hawthorne) Moore, who was one of the early pioneer residents of Granville
township. William Hawthorne, Sr., was born in Ohio and was only three years
of age when brought by his parents to Putnam county, Illinois. Following the
loss of his first wife he married again and removed with his family to
Normal, Illinois, where his son and namesake attended school for three or
four years. The father then removed to Indiana and William Edward Hawthorne
was upon the home farm in Porter county between the ages of twelve and
twenty-one years. He attended the public schools and pursued a scientific
course in the Northern Indiana Normal School at Valparaiso. In early manhood
he engaged in teaching school successively in Michigan, Indiana and
Illinois, after which he returned to Michigan. He was never graduated from
any educational institution but has always been a student of men and
literature and his special text-books have been the Bible, Shakespeare and
the American classics. These certainly are sufficient to give a man broad
knowledge and familiarity with the best that has been produced by the
writers of the ages. His pursuits in early life were similar to those of
most boys who are reared upon a farm. He remembers of his stepmother
requiring him to stay up most of the night studying the catechism. At the
time of her second marriage she was the widow of a Presbyterian minister and
was a most excellent and superior lady, to whom Mr. Hawthorne ascribes the
credit for the cultivation of his taste for things of refinement. The desire
for knowledge being awakened in him he improved his opportunities for the
acquirement of a broader education than the public schools afforded and he
paid his tuition with money which he had himself earned, never receiving a
dollar from any one except to return it when his labors as a teacher made
the discharge of the financial obligations possible.
On attaining his majority Mr. Hawthorne went to Michigan and worked for his
elder brother in a grain elevator at Marengo. It was there that he taught
his first school, and after his return to Indiana he engaged in teaching in
that state for a year prior to his removal to Florid, Putnam county,
Illinois. He afterward went to Vermontville, Michigan, where he held his
first principalship for two years. He taught his last school at Essexville,
Michigan, a suburb of Bay City. Each year during his experience as a teacher
brought him an advance in salary, indicating his growing ability in the
profession. In the fall of 1884 he took charge of a general store in
Granville, Illinois, for H. Bateman and in the following autumn in
connection with G. L. Brando he established a hardware and grocery store in
the building formerly used as the Granville Academy. For fifteen years he
was thus engaged in merchandising and retired from that line of activity two
years after his election to the office of superintendent of schools in
Putnam county, which office he occupied for eight years, during which time
through his efforts, the standard of public instruction was greatly raised
and the schools were placed upon an excellent working basis. He was also
town clerk and postmaster while engaged in merchandising and likewise served
as village treasurer and village clerk during that period. In 1901 he
organized the Granville Mercantile Company, conducting the business for four
years, and in 1903 he established the Granville "Echo," which was under the
management of his brother-in-law, B. B. Blosser, until 1905, when Mr.
Hawthorne abandoned the field of mercantile effort and took control of the
"Echo" printing business, in which he has since continued.
Aside from his official acts while an incumbent of political positions Mr.
Hawthorne has done much important public service as a private citizen. He
has given his cooperation to many progressive public movements, serving as
secretary of the Granville Lecture Association, while for the greater part
of twenty years he has been secretary of the Granville Cemetery Association,
performing the duties connected therewith with satisfaction to those
concerned and with financial success. In politics he has always been a
stalwart republican and has done some effective campaign work. He has never
been connected, however, with fraternal, political or social organizations
or clubs, his relations with organized bodies being restricted to the
church. When yet a boy he became a church member and is religiously
cosmopolitan, having belonged at different times to the Methodist Episcopal,
the Christian, the Presbyterian and the Congregational churches. Wherever he
has lived he has connected himself with the orthodox church of the community
and has been Sunday-school superintendent for perhaps twenty-five years of
his life, while in one way or another he has been connected with church work
for a long period. At the present time he holds membership with the
Congregational church at Granville, but occupies no office therein.
Mr. Hawthorne was married March 14, 1882, to Miss Emma Emelia Opper, of
Granville, a daughter of C. G. and Anna Opper. The first few years of their
married life Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne attended and taught school together.
Nine years following their marriage twin boys came to bless their home, and
so delighted was the father that he hastened to his office and had the
following announcement printed and distributed among his friends:
Often have the poets told us
In their lyrics of the deep,
Awful calms are but the presage
Of the storms that o'er them sweep.
Thus, perhaps, protracted stillness
On a calm domestic sea
Signifies that force is gathering
For the squalls that are to be.
Weighed we anchor on life's ocean
Sunlight flooding us in torrents,
But two little squalls have struck us,
William Henry and Orin Lawrence.
In 1894 twin daughters blessed the home, these being Helen and Marie. The
next in order of birth is Charles Findley, who bears the name of President
Blanchard of Wheaton College as well as the name of his grandmother. The
youngest in order of birth is Edward Everett, who was born in 1902. The
mother, as the name implies, is of German ancestry, and as she speaks, reads
and writes the German language she is likewise educating her children in the
German tongue. Five of the children are now attending school.
Mr. Hawthorne is himself a twin, his brother being 0. E. Hawthorne, a
resident of Marshall, Missouri, who is agent for the Chicago & Alton
Railroad Company. He is married and has a son and daughter, Lucile and Ray,
who are still with their parents.
Mr. Hawthorne believes fully in the principle expressed by the Bard of Avon
when he said, "There is a Divinity that shapes our ends," and while he
recognizes the fact that he has perhaps not improved all his opportunities,
that Divinity has never failed, and on every occasion he expresses himself
as a willing devotee at the throne of that Divinity. Mr. Hawthorne was
blessed with the influence of Christian parents, and to this, combined with
the influence and encouragement of his excellent wife, gives credit for the
position to which he has attained in the moral, business and social world.
He bears testimony to the power of associations as potential in forming
character. Next to his wife, no one has so influenced his life as his elder
brother whom he considers an ideal man. His father's example, too, has
always been that of a Godly man, while his intimate friends have been ever
men of the highest noble character. This brief sketch of the writer of our
historical narrative of Putnam county does not pretend to be a biography,
entering into detail but simply a suggestive outline, leaving the completion
to his future biographers after the records are all in.
Source: Past and Present of Marshall and Putnam Counties Illinois authored by John Spencer Burt and W. E. Hawthorne in 1907, page 135.
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